She made no answer; and a feeling of discouragement began to creep over him. He rose to his feet.
"A man who loves a woman as I love you," he said almost violently, "has only one wish—can have only one. I shall never rest or be thoroughly happy till you consent to marry me. That you can refuse as you do, seems to prove that you don't care for me enough."
She put her arms round his neck: her wide sleeves fell back, leaving her arms bear. "Maurice," she said gently, "why must you worry yourself?—You know if you are set on our marrying, I'll give way. But I don't want to be married—not yet. There's plenty of time. It's only a small matter now; it doesn't seem as if it could make any difference; and yet it might. The sense of being bound; of some one—no, of the law permitting us to love each other ... no, Maurice, not yet.—Listen! I'm older and wiser than you, and I know. Happiness like this doesn't come every day. Instead of brooding and hesitating, one must seize it while it's there: it's such a slippery thing; it's gone before you know it. You can't bind it fast, and say it shall last so and so long. We have it now; don't let us talk and reason about it.—Oh, to-day, I'm nervous! Let me make a confession. As a child I had presentiments—things I foresaw came true, and on the morning of a misfortune, I've felt such a load on my chest that I could hardly breathe. Well, to-day, when I came into this room again, it seemed as if two black wings shut out the sunlight; and I was afraid. The past weeks have been so unreasonably happy—such happiness mustn't be let go. Help me to hold it; I can't do it alone. Don't try to make it fast to the future; while you do that, it's going—do you think one can draw out happiness like a thread? Oh, help me!—don't let any thing take it from us. And I will give up everything to it. Only you must always be beside me, Maurice, and love me. Don't let anything come between us! For my sake, for my sake!"
In the face of this outpouring, his own opinions seemed of little matter; his one concern was to ward off the tears that he saw were imminent. He held her to him, stroked her hair, and murmured words of comfort. But when she raised her head again, her eyelids were reddened, as though she had actually wept.
"Now I know you. Now you are my own again," she whispered. "How could I know you as you were then? I'd never seen you like that—seen you cold and sensible."
He looked down at her without speaking, in a preoccupied way.
She touched his face with her finger. "Here are lines I don't know—I see them now for the first time—lines of reason, of common sense, of all that is strange to me in you."
He caught her hand, continuing to gaze at her with the same expression of aloofness. "I need them for us both. You have none."
Her lips parted in a smile. Then this faded, and she looked at him with eyes that reminded him of an untamed animal, or of a startled child.
"Mine ... still mine!" she said passionately.—And in the hours it took to reassure her, his primly reasoned conclusions were blown like chaff before the wind.